Unconscious Comedians | Page 8

Fromenteau calmly.

"Is there a lower depth still?" asked Bixiou.
"Yes, monsieur," said the spy. "Some people give us information
without knowing they do so, and without getting paid for it. I put fools
and ninnies below rapscallions."
"They are often original, and witty, your rapscallions!" said Leon.
"Do you belong to the police?" asked Gazonal, eying with uneasy
curiosity the hard, impassible little man, who was dressed like the third
clerk in a sheriff's office.
"Which police do you mean?" asked Fromenteau.
"There are several?"
"As many as five," replied the man. "Criminal, the head of which was
Vidoeq; secret police, which keeps an eye on the other police, the head
of it being always unknown; political police,--that's Fouche's. Then
there's the police of Foreign Affairs, and finally, the palace police (of
the Emperor, Louis XVIII., etc.), always squabbling with that of the
quai Malaquais. It came to an end under Monsieur Decazes. I belonged
to the police of Louis XVIII.; I'd been in it since 1793, with that poor
Contenson."
The four gentlemen looked at each other with one thought: "How many
heads he must have brought to the scaffold!"
"Now-a-days, they are trying to get on without us. Folly!" continued
the little man, who began to seem terrible. "Since 1830 they want
honest men at the prefecture! I resigned, and I've made myself a small
vocation by arresting for debt."
"He is the right arm of the commercial police," said Gaillard in Bixiou's
ear, "but you can never find out who pays him most, the debtor or the
creditor."
"The more rascally a business is, the more honor it needs. I'm for him

who pays me best," continued Fromenteau addressing Gaillard. "You
want to recover fifty thousand francs and you talk farthings to your
means of action. Give me five hundred francs and your man is pinched
to- night, for we spotted him yesterday!"
"Five hundred francs for you alone!" cried Theodore Gaillard.
"Lizette wants a shawl," said the spy, not a muscle of his face moving.
"I call her Lizette because of Beranger."
"You have a Lizette, and you stay in such a business!" cried the
virtuous Gazonal.
"It is amusing! People may cry up the pleasures of hunting and fishing
as much as they like but to stalk a man in Paris is far better fun."
"Certainly," said Gazonal, reflectively, speaking to himself, "they must
have great talent."
"If I were to enumerate the qualities which make a man remarkable in
our vocation," said Fromenteau, whose rapid glance had enabled him to
fathom Gazonal completely, "you'd think I was talking of a man of
genius. First, we must have the eyes of a lynx; next, audacity (to tear
into houses like bombs, accost the servants as if we knew them, and
propose treachery--always agreed to); next, memory, sagacity,
invention (to make schemes, conceived rapidly, never the same--for
spying must be guided by the characters and habits of the persons spied
upon; it is a gift of heaven); and, finally, agility, vigor. All these
facilities and qualities, monsieur, are depicted on the door of the
Gymnase-Amoros as Virtue. Well, we must have them all, under pain
of losing the salaries given us by the State, the rue de Jerusalem, or the
minister of Commerce."
"You certainly seem to me a remarkable man," said Gazonal.
Fromenteau looked at the provincial without replying, without
betraying the smallest sign of feeling, and departed, bowing to no
one,--a trait of real genius.

"Well, cousin, you have now seen the police incarnate," said Leon to
Gazonal.
"It has something the effect of a dinner-pill," said the worthy provincial,
while Gaillard and Bixiou were talking together in a low voice.
"I'll give you an answer to-night at Carabine's," said Gaillard aloud,
re-seating himself at his desk without seeing or bowing to Gazonal.
"He is a rude fellow!" cried the Southerner as they left the room.
"His paper has twenty-two thousand subscribers," said Leon de Lora.
"He is one of the five great powers of the day, and he hasn't, in the
morning, the time to be polite. Now," continued Leon, speaking to
Bixiou, "if we are going to the Chamber to help him with his lawsuit let
us take the longest way round."
"Words said by great men are like silver-gilt spoons with the gilt
washed off; by dint of repetition they lose their brilliancy," said Bixiou.
"Where shall we go?"
"Here, close by, to our hatter?" replied Leon.
"Bravo!" cried Bixiou. "If we keep on in this way, we shall have an
amusing day of it."
"Gazonal," said Leon, "I shall make the man pose for you; but mind
that you keep a serious face, like the king on a five-franc piece, for you
are going to see a choice original, a man whose